


Tilting At Windmills

by Alyndra



Series: John Winchester: In Defense of Family [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Always Keep Fighting, Episode: s02e17 Heart, Episode: s03e01 The Magnificent Seven, Gen, Heroism, Introspection, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Protective John Winchester, Sam's father issues, That teenchester werewolf hunt, retrospection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-05-21 02:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6034774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam used to be so angry at his dad for the way they grew up. </p><p>Sam was so naive. Dean's now bound for hell and Sam has demon blood. It's time to reevaluate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tilting At Windmills

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the new, reworked version!
> 
> The series would be done now, except for how I’ll be extensively rewriting Part 4, too. 
> 
> This would not be half as good without Wtgw being an awesome beta, helping me sort through all the things that were only obvious from inside my head. Tremendous thanks to her!

Sam had wished he could turn his brain off, or down anyway, more than once.

Now, any time his mind drifted, even for a moment, from the topic of saving Dean from Hell, it would obsess over how he'd been shown his mother, and the blood she hadn't been able to stop the demon from feeding Sam as a baby. Questions he couldn't answer wouldn't stop humming in his brain.

He hadn't been sleeping much, in the days since Cold Oak.

He'd been irritable enough to almost throttle his brother earlier in the evening. Sam had wanted to drive half the night because he'd finished his current tome of demon lore, and decided it was useless. Clearly the next step was to go through Bobby's library again immediately.

Or since Bobby's was a three-hour drive away, he supposed in three hours would do.

Dean had been equally determined to get shitfaced and look for casual sex in the bar next door.

Sam had nearly boiled over when he’d realized that Dean had no intention of budging. There had been a classic Dean display of refusing to acknowledge a problem by sailing out the door and pretending not to hear Sam, while Sam followed, arguing his desperate need for more research materials.

It was to no avail. By then Sam was seriously considering attempting to knock Dean on the head and carry him to the Impala.

He considered it for at least a second, anyway. Dean, damn him, grinned like he knew exactly what Sam was thinking (he probably did) and slung an arm around Sam's neck to drag him into the bar, still grumbling.

  
Dean would've fought dirty if Sam’d tried to force him into the car, anyway, or into anything else he didn't feel like doing.

Sam barely had time to notice the name of the bar, going in. _Don Quixote._ Inside, cheap tin armor decorated the walls and window ledges.

Dean probably thought it was just a quirky name, or if he did remember the story, it would be to approve of the image of riding off waving a sword to right wrongs.

But now Dean was ordering alcohol like it was going out of style. When his drinks came, he downed one and shoved another in Sam's direction, keeping the last two held close. Sam scowled. It was like Dean didn't even want to try to get out of his deal.

Engraved into the wall, the crazy old knight adopted a shaving basin as his helmet.

Sam didn't want to be here right now.

The Winchesters had long been experts in appearing to drink more than they actually were. It was essential for hustling pool or poker, and came in handy in any number of other situations.

One of Sam's early memories of being different from everyone else was of not long after he found out about monsters.

_He was still in the third grade, though they had just switched schools again over break, and he had been bugging Dean with questions about what to say to teachers if they started asking about what Dad did._

_"Tell'em Dad's a mechanic, or that he has to travel for work. Make it seem like we're normal, just like any other kids," Dean had said, scowling at his pre-algebra from seventh grade like it was personally offending him._

_"What if they don't believe me? What if they want to talk to Dad, and he's gone?" Sammy'd asked, worried._

_Dean had shrugged, the picture of unconcern. "Then tell them Dad's not home from the bar yet 'cause he drinks a lot."_

_Sammy had been horrified. "But that's not true! Dad! Dad, Dean said..."_

_"I heard," Dad had said, looking up from the pile of newspaper he was going through. "It's all right, Sammy. They’ll be upset if they think I drink a lot, but not nearly as upset as they'd be about monsters being real."_

_How upsetting that could be was still fresh in Sammy’s mind. "But what if they're so upset they try to take me away?" This was an older, more familiar danger. "What if they take me away and you don't know where I am?"_

_"Then I'll find you, Sammy, no matter how hard they try keeping you from me,” he said, pulling Sammy onto his lap, even though he squirmed a bit. Wasn't he getting too old for this?_

_Dad kept going. “It’s my job, protecting you. And you know what?" He’d asked. "If they all think I'm a dumb drunk, it'll be easier to outsmart them than if they think I hunt monsters, now won't it?" He’d tickled Sammy's ribs and Sammy, unable to stay serious, started to giggle._

_Finally he managed to get some words out between giggles. "But I don't want everybody thinking you're a dumb drunk!”_

_Dean looked up from his math set. "Then convince them we're all normal, and everything'll be fine, Sammy," he said, impatience coming into his tone because Dad was goofing off with Sammy while Dean was still working. "Sheesh," he added, just to make his point._

_"Uh oh, Sammy,” John whispered, loud enough to be overheard. “You know who needs some good tickling right now?”_

_Sammy didn't waste any time coming off of Dad's lap. Dean looked up as he saw him coming towards him._

_"Oh no you don't, 'm s'posed to finish this... Hey!" Dean leapt out of his chair too. "Stop it, you little twerp! Dad!”_

_But Dad was laughing at him. That left Dean with no other option. Sammy had been easy to enlist, so Dean sent him around Dad’s side to attack from behind while Dean himself distracted Dad with a frontal assault. He aimed for the ribs, the traditional weak points of tickle wars, and committed._

_Dad’s newspapers were a mess by the end, crumpled and torn. But Dean had been laughing as much as Dad and Sammy, by then._

That had been a long time ago. All grown up now, Sam looked across the bar table at his brother. While he'd been lost in thought, Dean had managed to charm a pair of laughing twins into joining them at their table.

These days it was Sam who had to study, while Dean tried to distract him with frivolities. Sam excused himself hastily and ignored Dean calling after him as he charged out through the windmill-themed doors of the bar. He felt like his own personal stormcloud hovered over his head.

Of course stormclouds didn't literally follow people around. Except- oh, wait. Except if they were people inhabited by evil black demon smoke. Then storms were one of the fucking signs Dad had used to track them by, weren't they?

Sam's brain wrenched itself down the familiar track. How had his mother known the yellow-eyed demon? Had she known what he had planned for Sam? What the demon blood meant?

What exactly did it mean for Sam, come to think about it?

Had Dad known? Had he known that his wife knew a demon? Had he known that the demon had done something to Sam? All these years, had that been a factor in his thinking that Sam had never known about?

It had always infuriated Sam, knowing that Dad knew stuff he wasn't telling, wasn't willing to share with his sons.

_Back when they'd fought a werewolf the first time, when Dean had been sixteen and Sam - he'd still been Sammy then - only twelve, he'd helped with the research for the case._

_Dad had still had his arm in a sling from the last hunt, so it had been Sam who'd looked up the werewolf Jason Pine's life, his family (normal, married to a teacher, two kids). Sam had sympathized with him. It had seemed monumentally unfair that Jason should be hunted for being a monster three nights of the month when that meant the ordinary guy he was - not just pretended to be, but was - the rest of the time would have to die too._

_Dad had been concerned, too. He'd researched long into the evening, night after night, looking for some kind of cure or way to make it better, some way to make it safe so no one else had to die. He'd called other hunters for information; Sam had been there for some of those phone calls, though he'd been at school the final time Bobby called John back._

_It wasn't like he didn't know how hard John had tried to find a better answer. But by the time he got home that day, John had gotten Dean all geared up to hunt down "the werewolf" that night, and he'd flatly forbidden Sammy from sharing with Dean any of their doubts, the lines of research into a cure they'd been pursuing, or anything at all that might humanize the monster they were going after._

Sam had resented it like crazy. He'd spent years thinking, if only he'd been able to get Dean on his side, things might have turned out differently. He was sure he could have made Dean see the werewolf's human side; and then Dean might not have been so hasty to shoot, might have looked for another solution instead of treating the whole thing like a rite of passage he'd triumphed through.

It wasn't until Madison, until she asked him for her own death and he gave it to her despite his own heart shredding apart, that Sam was able to look back on what John had said after Dean killed that long-ago werewolf.

" _Dean knowing everything about Jason Pine wouldn't have changed what had to happen here, Sammy," he'd said seriously, sitting to look Sam in the eyes. "It just would have made it hurt more."_

_Sam had thought that was bullshit, at the time, and hadn't hidden it. John had eventually resorted to decreeing that Sam didn't have to like him for it, but his decision was final and not to bring it up again without reason._

_Sam had thought for years that his dad just hadn't wanted to bother explaining himself. Sam was old enough, he figured, to understand all sorts of complex concepts if they were properly explained._

Only now, as an adult, his dad a memory, did it occur to him maybe Dad had meant what he'd said in more ways than one: that it wasn't only Dean's will to fight he'd been protecting by withholding information, but Sam's optimism, his belief that everything had a solution, that any problem could be solved if only they looked hard enough for a way to make it better.

There had been no way to make Madison better. And for the first time Sam fully understood what his father had meant when he said that knowledge would only make what had to be done hurt more.

His father had deliberately spared Dean from feeling that as a teenager, and at the same time protected Sam's innocence as much as he could. And Sam's response had been to become an increasingly rebellious teenager, throwing himself into school and studying and criticizing the family business.

Sam was grown up now. The world had turned out to be worse and harsher than he had ever wanted to believe. There was evil not just all around him, but in his very blood.

All things considered, he understood why Dad hadn't told him everything. A part of Sam wished he still didn't know. He couldn't imagine growing up knowing that unknown evil lurked in him, or that his mom had died for him, pointlessly.

Then he thought about Dean knowing those things too, and shuddered even more.

Knowing that crap would only hurt Dean. It wouldn't help anything.

Sam wondered if Dad had known what the demon wanted when he’d begged Sam to shoot him. Sam had known that if he'd killed his dad in order to kill yellow-eyes, Dean wouldn't have been able to bear it. He wouldn't have been able to forgive or forget. It would have destroyed their relationship, so Sam hadn't done it.

Had Dad known then what he’d told Dean before he died? That if Sam couldn't be saved from the demon, he’d have to be killed? Was that why Dad had been so determined to kill the demon that he'd been willing, desperate even, to sacrifice his own life, despite the toll it would take on his sons?

If this hadn't occurred to Dean, Sam wasn't going to bring it up. Dean knew exactly why Sam hadn't taken that second shot, but the last thing Dean needed was something else to feel guilty about.

Sam would probably never learn exactly what John had or hadn't known. But Dad had loved him, him and Dean both, and Sam didn't doubt any more that he'd done his best for them. Even though he'd died too early, before they were safe, before the demon had been taken out, he died knowing that he'd given his sons everything they needed to keep fighting, and that he'd raised them right.

And they'd done it, in the end; they'd taken out yellow-eyes, together one last time.

Sam went back to their motel. The front desk guy was slouched in his usual spot. “Didn't like the bar?” He asked. Sam had noticed before that he always had to say something about everything. “That themed decor’s pretty stupid, right?”

Sam blinked at him. Right, the deluded knight jousting at windmills.

“Knight’s quests were more my brother’s thing than mine,” he admitted, making polite conversation.

“Always thought that Don guy was an idiot,” the guy went on. “Didn't have the common sense to stay home instead of chasing after the impossible.”

“At least he was doing something,” Sam said, nettled.

“Yeah, getting laughed at.”

Sam didn't reply. He stormed past to his and Dean’s room.

Everyone said saving Dean’s soul from Hell was impossible. Even Bobby didn't really believe Sam had a shot, deep down. He moped around Dean like he was already planning the funeral.

Fuck everyone.

Sam was an adult now. And that meant it was Sam's job to step up to the plate, to make the hard calls, to do whatever it took to keep what was left of his family alive and whole.

  
Everyone had thought Dad had been wasting his time, all those years spent chasing evil. Even Sam had thought it. But Dad had known what he was doing, known it was important. And in the end, they’d gotten the demon, tracked it and fought it and killed it. There were other demons now, but Dad had spent his entire life proving it wasn't impossible.

Sam didn't have to accept the way things were, if the way things were was wrong. Evil could be fought.

Evil could be killed.

Sam packed up the motel room with the efficiency of many years on the road. He put everything in its place in the Impala and went to the front desk again to turn in the key. He started to go, then looked back at the desk clerk, still slumped in his chair.

“Don Quixote wanted to change the world,” Sam told him. The clerk jumped. “He wanted people to remember what it meant to have chivalry and honor and to do great deeds.”

“Woah, dude,” the guy complained. “He was crazy, fighting windmills. Everything he did was pointless.”

“Was it?” Sam asked. “Five hundred years later, he still means something to people.”

Sam turned and left. Maybe saving Dean was impossible, maybe not.

Just for one moment, Sam let himself think -- what if it was?

If Dean was really going to Hell -- then there might only be one thing Sam could give him that he could hold onto. Sam would make sure Dean knew -- knew with certainty -- that Sam would never give up on him, because Dean was worth saving.

Even if Dean didn't believe that now, Sam had a year to show him.

But that was if he failed, and Sam wasn't planning on failure. If there was a way to save Dean, any chance at all, Sam would find it.

From the Impala, Sam watched as Dean left the bar. He’d clearly been invited home with the twins. Sam kept a discreet distance and followed, driving slowly. He parked in view of their window. Dean noticed him, of course, but his new friends wouldn't.

Sam didn't regret checking out of their motel. It was fine; he'd wait until Dean was done here, and then they’d drive to Bobby's. In the meantime he could reread the book he had; it was remotely possible he'd missed something the first time.

He pulled out a flashlight. It was Sam's job to keep Dean out of Hell.

He wished he'd had the chance to talk to Dad about the demon bleeding into him as a baby. But he also knew what Dad would have said in the end. The words his dad would say whenever they faced something that seemed unbeatable echoed in his memory.

"If it bleeds, son, you can kill it."

He hadn't ever found that comforting before, all the years he'd spent growing up, fighting monsters.

Sam glanced up at the window where Dean cavorted, then back to his research on demons. Dad had always believed in him, even when Sam hadn't wanted anything to do with being a hero. Now Dad’s words were something to hold on to.

He was determined not to fail Dad, fail Dean.

Sam had work to do. 


	2. Brief Epilogue & Lengthy Notes

**Epilogue:**

The desk clerk from the motel Sam had just left picked up the phone. He dialed a number and snapped, “Tell Lilith I need to speak to her about the boy king.”

He waited, tapping a foot impatiently. Eventually Lilith’s voice came across the line, staticky due to electromagnetic interference, but distinguishable. “What’s taking you so long? Your mission was simple. Establish communication with Azazel’s champion. Convince him he will need to follow my directions to lead the demons and break the seals. You may have thought it was beneath you...”

“No, Mistress. It's not … I’m afraid it’s even worse than the rumors, Mistress. I located the special child and observed him without revealing myself. The situation Azazel left us with is not what we expected; it does not appear the boy will be amenable to the plan at all.”

“If he wants to negotiate, give him whatever he wants. We need him to play his part for the Apocalypse to happen.”

“He wants his brother not to go to Hell.”

“Anything _else_ he wants.”

“He's … focused.”

“Then do whatever you have to do, but pull him into line. I want him in place for the finale,” Lilith said. For a moment, it seemed she might finish there; but then the other shoe dropped, as it always did with Lilith. She did love emphasizing her point.

“Oh, and Ruby? Don't let me see your face again until you’ve brought him around.”

The phone line went dead with a click.

Ruby looked at down at the sorry excuse for a vessel that had been as close as she could get to Sam Winchester. The only people he trusted were warded against demons; he didn't have a circle of friends or even acquaintances he saw regularly that she could slip into.

And much good it would do her if he did, she thought. She suspected even the Devil himself might have trouble swaying that one, predestined vessel or not.

One problem at a time. She just had to convince him to listen to her, first; second, find a hook she could use to pull him away from the Michael vessel, away from all those high-flung notions of loyalty to his family and doing the right thing.

If she didn't, the whole plan was dead in the water. She had her work cut out for her, all right.

...Fuck.

What had Azazel been _thinking_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as John being a protective dad, we don't much get to see it directly, other than that against the odds, the boys did actually grow up ok. But on series rewatch, throughout seasons 1 and 2, I was struck by how much innocence Sam and Dean still had left to lose. That suggested to me that they were sheltered from the worst emotional impacts of Hunting, despite having been in the life since childhood.
> 
> Alcoholism can be a touchy subject; I hesitated about addressing it. Sam and Dean probably learned their habits of using alcohol to cope with their lives from John. But when Sam and Dean talk about John's drinking in the Pilot, for instance, it struck me as sounding more like a kind of code for talking about hunting/monsters in front of Jess. I don't think John was interested in the kind of drinking to excess I see in some fanfic as much as he would've liked being underestimated by his enemies, something else I love seeing Sam and Dean play with: Sam will duck his head and let people think he's an unassuming geek if it suits him, while Dean’s dumb grunt act is delightful!
> 
> John Winchester has a reputation in fanfic for never being there for his kids which, imo, wasn't the original intention for his character. I don't care to dislike someone that Sam and Dean loved, so if writing these to assuage my own feelings has helped anyone else to view John differently, that's all I could hope for!
> 
> ... Well, it's also true I'd love any thoughts you may feel like leaving; feedback feeds my soul!


End file.
